Apparently isn't to earn an education, work hard, or even become skilled at your craft.
Looks like all you have to do is put together a contracting bid, lose the bid, and threaten to sue the State Agency that made the decision because "the decision wasn't fair."
Then you can walk away with a cool baker's dozen (in millions) and you never have to lift a finger.
Does this seem wrong to anybody else (alleged political "pay-to-play" schemes aside)?
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50285759-76/governor-udot-million-settlement.html.csp?page=1
2 comments:
I'm always a little conflicted over stuff like this. One the one hand, it seems like an awful lot of taxpayer money gets funneled into lawsuit payoffs that amount to unjust enrichment.
On the other hand, my father is a civil engineer and the bureaucracy he encounters sometimes beggars belief. Whether it's consistently awarding projects to someone peripherally related to certain politicians, city engineers running approvals like their own personal fiefdom, lawyers who fail to zealously advocate in mediation because they don't want to offend their bread-and-butter... we moved more than once in my childhood simply because someone at the city office decided that they were going to stonewall every project with my father's name on it, which makes it pretty hard to win even private-sector bids once word gets around.
I would like to see the offending bureaucrats pay instead of the city, but I guess the whole point of bureaucracy is to construct a government as un-beholden to outside correction as possible. When it comes to addressing the problems that arise, I think huge awards like this are an ugly kludge, but I'm not sure I have a more elegant solution.
Excellent comment. Thanks, Kenny.
I suppose I'm most troubled both by the amount of the settlement and the allegations swirling around the Governor's office.
I also wonder why, if UDOT feared a lengthy litigation and increased construction costs due to delays, why not open it for a rebid to the same companies? Allow the contractors to utilize their same bids, supplement them at their will, and hold the process again.
At one point, UDOT claimed that they were merely covering the cost of the losing contractor's bid plus a little bit.
I want to know what kind of construction bid costs 13 million to put together!
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